CHENNAI: It was around 5 am on April 29, 2009. A suburban train had just moved out of the Chennai Central suburban station with a few unsuspecting passengers in it. Nothing seemed odd as they had no inkling that the train was ‘hijacked’. That was perhaps the first ever -- and still the only train hijack -- reported in the country.
What the investigators believed was a futile attempt due to the hijacker’s lack of knowledge about the usual suburban train tracks, ended up within minutes when it collided head on with a goods train parked at the Vyasarpadi Jiva Railway Station. The impact was so huge that the compartments moved up and hit a foot overbridge, which collapsed.
Seven years after the incident, the identity of the man who operated the train and his motive remain unknown. The body of the man, who is believed to have ‘hijacked’ the train, was found on the tracks. The torso was intact, except for the hands that got severed in the impact. Investigators found a tattoo on his hand, with ‘Nagaraju’ written in Telugu.
Besides him, three of the 11 passengers (fortunately there was no crowd in the train since it was early in the morning) died in the collision.
A study report by two experts from the Institute of Forensic Sciences, Gujarat Forensic Sciences University in Gandhinagar, concluded the man with the tattoo on the arm was the hijacker since only he was aware about the impending collision and jumped out of the train moments before the accident. All the rest of the deceased were crushed to death inside the compartments.
“Due to the momentum with which he had fallen off the train, he had sustained injuries over the left part of the body predominantly. The left arm has been dismembered in the impact of hitting a pole present in the platform. The lower part of the leg/lower limb has been severely lacerated (up to bone deep). So it is possible to conclude that he had only taken the train from the railway station and had sustained injuries and died when he tried to jump off the train to escape just before the collision with another train stationed in the same track,” said the report, which was accessed by Express.
One of the authors of the report, G Rajesh Babu, assistant professor and expert in anthropology and fingerprints, said the then DIG (CB-CID) P Kannappan made a request to conduct a case study a year after the ill-fated incident. Subsequently, he and the institute’s director Mohinder Singh Dahiya visited Chennai and reconstructed the sequence of events that might have led to train hijack and the collision killing four, of which three have been identified.
Why the braking system of suburban train failed?
Rajesh Babu said the first thing they did was to take a test drive in a train from the point from where the Chennai-Tiruvallur suburban train was hijacked and rammed into the goods train at Vyasarpadi three minutes later at 90 kmph.
“The speedometer record provided by the authorities showed the train was travelling at over 90 kmph. We maintained the same speed and applied the brake, which took effect only after 50 m. This meant there was no way the collision could have been averted even though the accused had applied the brakes,” Babu said.
The foot overbridge that has been dismantled showed the extent of force and kinetic energy with which the trains had collided, he said.
Circumstantial evidence
Based on circumstantial evidences, the forensic experts have said that the fourth unidentified deceased was the alleged hijacker. The injury marks on his body indicate that he died jumping off the train. It was evident from the paint flakes from the train’s body that were present on the upper part of his body.
Apart from his arm and leg, his back also had injuries that were mainly abrasions and lacerations sustained due to the dragging effect on the rough surface. The distance that the body was dragged showed the extent of the severity and the speed of the train when the person had jumped off.
The expert ruled out the possibility of the person having fallen down from the foot overbridge as in such a case, he could have been crushed to death within the dismantled bridge.
Tattoo clue didn’t work
Tattoo on the hand of the ‘hijacker’ has not helped the investigators a bit. A CB-CID officer said a team had spent two years, probing this case exclusively.
“We tried to match the photograph of the alleged hijacker and the name in the tattoo with the missing persons and voters’ list in nine districts of Andhra Pradesh and one district of Odisha, but in vain,” the investigation officer said.
The then Inspector General of Police (RPF) G M P Reddy said the case was challenging. “The luxury of CCTV footage was not there then to the extent it is there today,” he said.
A source in the fingerprint unit told Express that all the fingerprints collected from the crime scene did not match the alleged hijacker.
Four families claimed body
Between 2009-15, four families have come forward to claim the body of the alleged hijacker, forcing the investigators to conduct DNA test. Surprisingly, none of the samples matched the deceased. A woman from Gunupur in Rayagada district in Odisha claimed that he was her husband, but the DNA did not match with that of her son.
Was he mentally-ill?
Rajesh Babu said based on the eyewitness accounts, the alleged hijacker could have been mentally ill. It could be that he had an inherent desire to drive a train and was caught wandering in the station for long time before the incident. He might have observed the train operations and also learnt which is the speed gear and break gear.
Unanswered question
A railway technical staff, on conditions of anonymity, said there was no clarity on which of the three engines was started by the accused. He explained that an electrical multiple unit have three engines -- at the front, middle and rear.
The records showed that there was no power consumption. The accused had started the train and drove at 90 kmph, but there was no power consumption record for the same!